


Absolve

by divine_rose



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, On and of the nature of forgiveness, Saix was an asshole send tweet, a very overdue talk, no beta we die like men, xion is BEST GIRL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22641007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divine_rose/pseuds/divine_rose
Summary: Sometimes it felt like too much, all these emotions she felt. When she was joyous she was joyous and when she was sad she cried and it felt like her heart was going to burst and even in that pain there was something wonderful and real. A beauty in that because she could feel for all the good and ill it brought and if she could feel then she had to be real even when it felt like feeling was too much at the low times and too little somehow at the high times.When Saix—no, Isa, returned alive and whole in Radiant Garden. She got to take all these new real people emotions for a very thorough test drive.______________Xion and Isa have a long overdue talk.Post KH3, written before re:mind originally.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 41





	Absolve

Despite her very young life that was even younger than her appearance betrayed Xion had lived a very  _ odd  _ existence. 

Seemed to just be the way of things when you weren’t strictly human. She wasn’t even something strictly  _ other _ then human either like a Nobody or a Heartless. She was a replica. A sum of parts stolen and stuffed into an empty shell and animated by some mad scientist’s devices. Like something out of a scary story Axel would tell her and Roxas late at night when no one could sleep or like something from that strange town with the tall skeleton man. 

She knew this now. She knew herself. Or at least she  _ had  _ a sense of self now. 

Too long she had been made and unmade. A puppet pulled by strings she didn’t even know where there until they yanked her along and filled her up with stolen bits and pieces until she was about to burst and then set her off against her best friend in the entire world. 

All the people that created her did was  _ take and take _ . Use, abuse and then throw their toys away when they were done playing with them and that was what they wanted her to do to Roxas. They wanted her to become just like them. Something that used others and then threw them away as empty and hollow as she so often felt when the tide of stolen emotions and memories ebbed away from her. 

It was true she longed to hold onto them, to keep them as her own but that was  _ wrong  _ because they weren’t hers to keep. 

So maybe there had been something  _ real  _ about her after all. That spark of goodness that had made her accept her fate and walk into her destruction with open arms knowing that she should have been  _ gone _ . Not even a flicker of memory to hold her together. To prove that she ever  _ was.  _

But that was ok. It was better than becoming like  _ them _ . It was better to die as  _ Xion.  _ For all the good and ill that meant. 

Except it didn’t work like that. 

Because they still found a way, those awful, terrible puppeteers, to pick up the broken pieces of her and fashion a new doll. One that was emptier and did as they were told and was so barren and perfect she could be filled with anything and serve whatever purpose. 

There was something remarkably cruel in the knowledge that everything had been for nothing. That they still won. They still got to use her as they pleased. 

Truth be told. She didn’t remember that time well. 

It was a blessing really, but she had enough awareness to know that she had done terrible awful things and attacked good people. 

She had been made to do it but the line blurred in her mind. 

Blurred because she knew how close she came to killing one of her best friends. How it was sheer  _ luck _ that sent every tiny little fractal of  _ herself _ back home and when she was the closest thing to  _ whole  _ and  _ real  _ she had ever been she couldn’t help but cry. 

The horror of being used again. How inescapable it all was and how happenstance saved her and brought her back was enough to rattle her to her core. 

They told her she was real now. A real genuine person but she had so many doubts and was used so many times that one couldn’t help but be a little cynical. 

How many times had she quietly pinched her arm when no one was looking? Her eyes growing distant as her friends were embroiled in a joyous conversation and her mind just... _ drifted _ and she began to feel slightly disconnected from her body, inflicting a flash of pain on her arm to ground herself again with a mild jolt of sensation. This was _ real. _ She was  _ real. _

Sometimes it felt like too much, all these emotions she felt. When she was joyous she was _joyous_ and when she was sad she cried and it felt like her heart was going to burst and even in that pain there was something wonderful and _real_. A beauty in that because she could _feel_ for all the good and ill it brought and if she could _feel_ then she had to be _real_ even when it felt like feeling was too much at the low times and too little somehow at the high times. 

When Saix—no, _Isa_ , returned alive and whole in Radiant Garden. She got to take all these new real people emotions for a very thorough test drive. 

She was happy he was alive, she certainly didn’t wish  _ death  _ on anyone and she was happy he was whole and free of Xehanort and that Axel—Lea was happy. 

But. 

_ But.  _

Xion was finding it rather...difficult to look at the face of the man who had objectified her for her entire existence and was given charge of her when she was finally remade into the organization’s perfect little doll. 

Every time she looked at him it was like all those little moments, every little comment that was muttered under breath but just loud enough for her to still hear, and every little sneer. 

Mostly she remembered how he made her  _ feel _ . If  _ feeling _ was the word. Low. Worthless. In the organization she had actively tried to interact as little as possible but there wasn’t anyway around it so she tried to be perfect, never faltering. Maybe that would earn some level of  _ approval _ . 

Except it never did. No matter how many missions, not matter how many heartless slayed, he  _ always  _ looked at her like she was some lowly creature blighting his line of sight. Even when they took her and twisted her and made her a perfect doll as she was meant to be, even when she was everything the organization could have possibly wanted, not even then. She wouldn’t be  _ enough _ no matter how hard she tried and she couldn’t even escape from the situation that put her in his path as a whole, their courses had been forcibly set. Linked throughout both their stints in organizations real or not. 

Heart or not, the Nobody always seemed to have such contempt for her and she never understood why. She wasn’t sure it was something she could understand. Axel said sometimes people were just assholes. Roxas said sometimes people were just cruel. Maybe that was it, though if it was Xion struggled to see what Axel saw in him. 

Perhaps there was a method to the madness. Perhaps she’d give Isa—Saix—the benefit of the doubt and say that he had surely instructed Vexen to recreate her so she could be reunited with Axel and Roxas and made real in some crazy gambit that actually was  _ pulled off _ . 

But. 

_ But.  _

He had still let them use her. Circumstances or no.  _ Knowingly.  _ And  _ that  _ wasn’t even taking into account everything from before. 

Xion didn’t go with Axel to Radiant Garden and neither did Roxas. 

Axel understood, he promised he would get an apology out of his old friend for both of them and assured the two he would never put them in a situation they weren’t comfortable with so he would keep everything separate. 

Axel was a good friend. He always meant well even if those well meanings were a bit misguided sometimes. 

She had actually asked to speak with Isa privately. At a suitable time once he had gotten his bearings together. She’d afford him every comfort he had never extended to her in the past. 

Namine called it “killing them with kindness”.

Roxas called it “being better than your enemies.” 

Xion called it both. 

The meeting started out with him seeming mournful enough. Isa had trouble meeting her gaze which was slightly amusing given this man had tormented her so and now seemed almost  _ afraid _ of her. In almost a complete reversal of their roles. Surely because she was living, breathing proof of the mistakes of his past. All the pain he had caused. 

She took it in a reasonable stride. 

“My first memory is of you leading me out of Castle Oblivion.” She said to finally pierce the silence in the room before it solidified and crushed them both. 

She could hear a small sigh escape him as if he had been holding his breath in preparation for a far worse blow. 

“I was there, yes.” He shifted his gaze again. Teal eyes suited him much better than amber and he looked remarkably  _ softer _ somehow. 

That didn’t change anything though. 

You can’t undo  _ hurt _ . You can’t take it away or pretend it never happened. There was only dealing with that hurt. Whatever that meant. 

Axel called it coping. 

Xion couldn’t keep measured forever as she balled her tiny hands into fists in her lap and pressed down to keep from jumping to her feet. 

“You were  _ cruel _ .” she admonished. 

“I was.” he agreed. 

“To Roxas, to Axel…” she ticked off names on a mental list one by one. 

“I was.” He agreed again, “and to you most of all.” 

He looked and sounded mournful. She believed him. 

But she didn’t want to forgive him.

Did that make her a bad person? Sora and Roxas and everyone were so  _ good  _ and  _ forgiving.  _ Did it make her a bad person if she didn’t want to forgive? If she wanted to take all this anger and sadness inside her and cruel up around it because it felt like armor against the world. Against it ever happening again. 

She was afraid it did. That she really didn’t belong with her friends or with anyone else if she didn’t forgive and put on a smile and pretend everything was  _ ok  _ and she was  _ fine.  _ She was afraid that she didn’t really belong here, in the light, she had been made for the dark and used and controlled. Of her own accord or not when the die was cast she had stood as one of the thirteen. 

“I...I don’t forgive you.” Her voice was shaking. She quickly added to soften the blow because she felt like that was a  _ wrong  _ thing to say for reasons she wasn’t sure, “I know I should but…” 

Isa closed his eyes, acknowledging that, “I understand.” He opened them again to look at her, confusion in them which only made her confused. “Xion.” He tried so hard not to sound anything close to stern, to soften as best he could edges made sharp by years of envy and rage. To talk slowly and quietly as not to upset her more, to sound as far removed from  _ Saix _ as one could ever hope to be far from a part of oneself. “It’s alright. You shouldn’t feel obligated to forgive me for what I did.” 

He knew quite well everything he had done. That was his cross to bear and it would be childish and foolish to think that any excuse he could possibly give would undue all that or somehow justify it. There was no justifying hurt. 

“I’m terrible.” 

He could hear the sob in her voice. She was so afraid that not being able to accept the person who hurt her so deeply with open arms had rendered her terrible and broken and deserving or the dark she had been placed in. 

You couldn’t ask someone to absolve you of your sins, ultimately the only one who you need to seek absolution from is yourself. Learning to live with what had been done. Accepting that the people you’ve harmed don’t owe  _ you _ anything. 

“You’re not terrible.” 

“I am! I’m supposed to forgive you but I  _ can’t. _ ” She was shaking, a storm of emotions brewing in her. 

“Why do you think you have to?” 

She had no answer for that. 

An understanding of the world and those that inhabited it, completely skewed by circumstance could have something to do with it. Being originally made up of memories that were never hers which had certain ideas that she never before got a chance to decide if they were right for  _ her _ could also contribute. Ultimately Xion was a product of her twisted environment, learning all the ins and outs of the world in the wrong order. 

“Xion…” he cautiously held a hand out to her and after several moments of contemplation she held it because it was something like comfort. 

“We all have to decide for ourselves what’s right…” he told her with remarkable gentleness, “You never have to do anything you don’t want to again...I don’t expect you to forgive me for what I did and you don’t have to. It doesn’t make you wrong or lesser.” 

Despite her anger and frustration there was something oddly calming about being told she was good from the proverbial boogeyman that had haunted so much of her short life.

To be regarded and seen and accepted as a person finally.  _ Finally,  _ to be treated as an equal. To be treated as better. Validation for her now very new emotions and very real personhood and fears. 

It was the best apology he could ever offer her.

It did not make everything right, nothing ever could, there was no magic solution to wipe everything away and render it so it never was but perhaps it was better this way. She was who she was, literally and metaphorically because of the people around her and the circumstances that shaped her. 

She was slowly beginning to learn who  _ she  _ was and everything that meant. All that mattered was she behaved in the way that was best for  _ her _ . Not what was best for Sora or Roxas or anyone else. The only one who dictated her life was her. 

“Thank you.” She wiped stray beads of tears from the corners of her eyes. 

Isa never once asked her to forgive him. It felt like taking something away from Xion who had so much taken from her already. It felt selfish in a way, to make her pain, pain he caused, about him. 

He could accept never being forgiven. Quite honestly didn’t have any right to be. What happened happened. There would be no changing it. Only fresh starts and cautious steps. Tentative invitations to ice cream at the tower and respectfully stepping back when asked. It would be awkward and messy but life was awkward and messy and so very far from perfect.

They were all broken in a way. Used and cast aside by others even if they had gone on to do the same. 

They were similar but different. Real whole people who made real whole decisions and fumbled through what it meant to be hurt and abused and to forgive and not forgive. 

Acceptance. 

She accepted what happened. There was no use dwelling on the past, falling into that downward spiral of wishing things were different. What good was it wishing for acceptance and a fresh start of that formative time in her life? The hard truth was she wouldn’t be where she was now, she wouldn’t be  _ Xion _ as she knew herself without it. She didn’t forgive it but she accepted it and him in a way. Gathering up all the bad and broken pieces of her past, shattered armor she had though she had to hide in and fashioning herself into something new, something that wasn’t broken but whole. 

Xion would never quite forgive him, that much was certain and that choice was hers and hers alone. No one else’s. 

That was human.

That was  _ real.  _

It wouldn’t be an easy road ahead, she would always carry the weight of what had been done to her, the invisible scars like tiny cracks in porcelain but he would always carry the weight of what he had done, too. There was no taking back the past. No remedy to undo the damage done. One simply couldn’t rewind time or magically wish it all away, and they both knew in different ways they would be lesser for it. They could only walk forward. They could only be better than they were. 

They could only discover what forgiveness and penance meant for themselves and no one else. There was only learning to live with yourself. No easy truths or easy absolutions. 

It was time and care and baby steps but it wasn’t an impossibility. Nothing was in their crazy world. 

So Xion chose not to forgive but to accept what had happened and accept that the dark time of her life was over and they were all people kept captive in the dark slowly fumbling their way into the light for all the good and ill that meant. 

She had been deeply wronged and used and for the first time it felt like she was coming up for fresh air from the sea of self blame. It wasn’t her fault, it hadn't been her fault, she who was nothing but an artificial child slowly made real by her own power and by the powers of those who  _ saw  _ her, who looked at her and saw  _ someone _ . Someone important to them. The blame laid in the adults around her, people who were supposed to nurture and protect but instead used and abused but she survived. She was made of stronger stuff, able to cling to being and guided back home. 

Xion was grateful, to the aid given, to the steps towards making things  _ right  _ but she was too raw, her wounds made anew and the wellspring of emotions she felt made it hard to be generous and that was ok. She was Xion. She was a real person with emotions good and bad. She contained multitudes and she was her own being, no one else’s. 

She checked her eyes once more for stray droplets of tears, looking down to see a tissue carefully held out to her, the motion tentative as if one was trying to aid a wounded animal and wasn’t sure how they’d react. Xion gave a small breathy laugh, grabbing the cloth from Isa’s hand and looking at him with slight amusement.

“Buy me an ice cream and we’ll call it a start.” 

Isa let out a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding, it rattled out like the ghost of a laugh. “Fair enough.” 

Two weeks later she invited him along with them to the clock tower.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this several months ago and recently came back to add some additional beats on it. 
> 
> I was really just overcome with wanting these two to really talk it about and for Xion to be allowed to not forgive what had happened to her and Isa knowing he was going to have to figure out what living with what he had done meant to him. There’s no cookie cutter way to deal with these things. 
> 
> Anyway that *may* have gotten just the tiniest bit personal but I hope you enjoyed it and thanks for reading!


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